Shelf Awareness--Sheine Lende

YA Review: Sheine Lende

Sheine Lende Darcie Little Badger, illus. by Rovina Cai (Levine Querido, 400p., ages 12-up, 9781646143795, April 16, 2024)

The gritty, luminous Sheine Lende, a prequel to Darcie Little Badger's acclaimed first novel, Elatsoe, features stouthearted Shane (grandmother to Elatsoe's Ellie) who uses the family's ability to raise ghosts to find three people, one of whom is her own mother.

The women in 17-year-old Shane Solé's Lipan Apache family line know how to reach deep into "the world Below" to "raise the ghosts of animals." Shane and her mother, Lorenza, are known for their tracking abilities; they and their two living bloodhounds, along with a single shimmering ghost dog, are often called upon to find missing people. Although Shane knows her small family would benefit from being paid for these services--just a few short years ago, they lost their home, father, and grandparents in quick succession--Lorenza "never charge[s] people money for rescue jobs."

When 16-year-old Donnie and 10-year-old Bobby go missing, Lorenza is called to help. Then Lorenza herself disappears. Shane, her younger brother, Marcos, and her grandpa Louis rush to help locate what has become three missing people. The unconventional band of trackers find an abandoned cabin with a "circle of ash-gray ground" outside. Grandpa Louis identifies it as a "mimic" fairy ring, a hazardous phenomenon that is capable of transporting humans to undisclosed locations using "extradimensional magic."

Shane is too late to realize she is standing inside a "well-hidden, hula-hoop-sized circle." She's whisked several hundred miles away, where she finds a bedraggled and grateful Donnie. Shane sends up a flare, whereby the girls are rescued, and while they wait for Grandpa Louis to come for them, Shane and Donnie suspect that Bobby may have been transported to the underworld. Shane determines to solve the linked mysteries of the mimic rings, where Bobby has gone, and her mother's disappearance.

Little Badger's beguiling novel includes stories within stories that enrich the main narrative, telling tales whose monumental purposes are "to be shared and remembered." She entices readers by creating a world where monsters and "powerful magics" exist alongside actual history. Rovina Cai once again gracefully illustrates Little Badger's work with delicate line drawings that act as chapter headings. Intergenerational relationships (with relatives both alive and Below) form the basis of this wonderful novel, as does Shane's sense that her family--and their ghost animals--are looking out for her. Here's hoping readers will receive more sequels, prequels, or spin-offs that take place in this fresh, compelling world. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author.